The most reliable weather report is the insomniac’s one: at 3.14am it is/was raining.
It was plunging auditory variety of rain. The rattle on the cottage roof quality to it. With a noticeable lack of any wind, yet a certain fresh and invigorating quality, as anyone who left the window open to go to sleep would note.
All those who forgot to water the garden today can sleep peacefully and at ease.
At the risk of creating uproar I have been enjoying the weather that has the city so sunken in the glooms. There are several reasons for this, firstly everyone is discussing it and noticing it and I’m a firm advocate for paying attention to the weather. (& mortality, unfortunately no one is discussing that) There’s plenty to notice about it.
I’ve observed that the rain, being the intermittent variety, means it’s perfectly feasible to work in the garden and have managed to do some excavating of my booming strawberry patch. However, I’ve also been engaged in the close scrutiny and spying and entrapment by my two not so fat fingers of the burgeoning slug increase. Ha! I’m onto these fellas finally. I’m getting crafty with them and scooping them out to a salty finale.
Second reason I’ve been enjoying the weather is how it reminds me of November and winter. I also appreciate the audacity of it that it will do what it wishes and that the population demands what has come before, what they know to be summer and for the latter few days it’s on its own drive and direction.
The third reason I’ve been enjoying it is the terrible news stories that are being written around it that contain the most unimaginative language and invocations. It’s a firm reminder that the weather is linguistically unchartered territory except for the brief literature we have and Gerry Gilbert’s weathery poems come to mind. I must resurrect the literary weather forecasts and make some more.
The weather has in fact been good clothes drying weather if you are attempting to dry them on an apartment balcony. Friday was a faceful of fresh blustery wind that reminded me of the most blustery spot on the planet, which I am deeply familiar with. But if you can isolate these single elements within the weather system it will enhance your neurological weather noticing and then when those very blue skies come, which they have done this summer, well ditto you notice them.
A footnote on the aforemention three brothers house with the former hatchy looking garden I used to so delight in. Passed it again the other soiree and noted that the new lottery looking house, with the overindulgence in gravel in the front garden, also wrapped the entire place in a tall fence so you can actually see nowt whatsoever of the back garden.
What an odd conclusion to a home whose garden was, for so many years (if not generations?) a place to feast one’s eyes on. I can recall small children standing there pointing at the objects poking up out of it, foaming with begonias instead of bathwater.
Does wealth really need to be this unimaginative?! I wonder what the patterns are on fencing and whether as house prices have soared there is any difference in the height of fences people border their properties with? It would be great to examine and record how gardens have changed in relation to other historical changes in the city. My friend Lori Weidenhammer recently did some workshops around garden memories and bookmaking. Blogs are also forming excellent records and documentation in this area.
I concur with Monsieur LaPlanche that the subconscious is “completely atemporal”.
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Flying trapeze ambitions (due to commence tomorrow) may be interrupted due to an unfortunate outcome during a front somersault on the trampoline ce soir, forgot my arms, followed by some kind of fail on some move with the word swivel in it. I am not compatible with mid-air swiveling my lower back determined.
My favourite gymnastics coach is back from China. If only he could also perform some kind of neuro-tele-porting.
The successful (so far) double leg transplant performed in Spain recently is an astonishing achievement. Ditto I am excited to read about the first successful synthetic windpipe organ transplant. (That is I am guessing also the first successful synthetic organ transplant ever) The first facial transplant blew my mind, more so than I remember feeling when I realized people could hop about on the moon.
Radical America 1977
Came across this old issue online of Radical America from 1977. It has an article in it by Barbara and John Ehrenreich on the New Left and Professional Managerial Class amongst others.
Wapping
Speaking further of news: throughout the News International NOTW furore I was surprised not to hear the word “Wapping” in relation to the lengthy picket line that took place there in the 1980’s. It was one of the main labour strikes, along with the Miners and the Railway Workers. (I still rem a song about Jimmy Knapp)
It began in 1986 and ended a year later in 1987. You can read more details on it here. I clearly remember buses (or maybe minibuses) taking people to the picket line there and how defining that strike was in terms of the move to destroy the unions in England under Thatcherism. Eeery foreshadowing in the way the workers were yet again sold down the swanny in this recent episode. (Whatever one’s sentiments about NOTW).
CBC News has today managed to offer us the worst headline in 125 years.
The ‘real Vancouver’ celebrates 125
The summary beggars belief but I’ll let you click to suffer it.